Blog Archives

In April, Peter Hitchens eloquently described the way this country is being sold to foreign governments and companies:

“I don’t think any other nation would put up with this. Why do we? The most ridiculous is the way our trains – devastated by John Major’s mad privatisation scheme – are falling into the hands of foreign state railways. So, while the Government cannot bear to have railways run by the British state, it is happy to have them run by the German, Dutch, French or even Hong Kong state systems . . . in this country that invented the railway and once exported equipment and skills around the world.”(Right: Private profit from public loss: NIPSA 2013)

Hitchens summarises:

Privatised railways’ jaws are clamped firmly to the public teat; when they fail they can just stroll away from the mess they have made.

British Rail’s trains were faster and more comfortable. It looked after its track far better and – given the money – it would never have made the mess its successors are now making of electrifying the Great Western line, which is years behind schedule, partly abandoned and vastly over budget.

In the 20 years to 2013, state subsidies to the rail sector roughly tripled in real terms, while fares continued to rise.

My trains are almost always late, frequently very badly so.

But they get more expensive all the time.

those responsible are protected from us by call centres and unresponsive websites, which only talk to us when they want to.

Finally Hitchens adds: “Last week it emerged that SNCF is bidding to operate HS2, a pointless vanity line that should have been cancelled long ago but which the Government is too weak to abandon. So we might be hiring a foreign state railway to run a service we don’t even need, while Britain is full of sizeable towns with no railway station, which could be linked to the national system for a tiny part of the cost of HS2 . . . The idea that our rulers have any idea what they are doing, or can be trusted with our national future, is a joke. They’re just hoping the bailiffs don’t turn up before the Election. But if they do, what have we got left to sell, to pay our bills?”

Hines argues that the Treaty of Rome needs transforming into a ‘Treaty of Home’ that will allow peoples to protect what they hold dear

Rupert Read has described Colin Hines’ ‘feisty clarion call’ for a change of direction away from acquiescence in the deregulated world that spawned the financial crisis and towards protection of nature, workers, localities and sovereignty, resisting rootless international capital.

As Read says, Hines’ policy ofProgressive Protectionism will surely be part of a socially and environmentally viable future: crucial thought-leadership away from the political dead-end of globalisationist fantasy.

As Conservatives canvas vigorously in Witney, hustings were held at the High Street Methodist Church; but only candidates for the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats and the Green Party were invited.

Later, at Charlbury Memorial Hall, Churches Together in Charlbury and the West Oxfordshire branch of the United Nations Association organised a second hustings, inviting all the candidates standing in the by-election on October 20.

They included independents and other parties such as the National Health Action Party, represented by Dr Helen Salisbury (right), an Oxford GP & lecturer at Oxford University medical school, who fears that the current government is in the process of breaking up the NHS, inviting private providers to take over more and more services.

No picture including all candidates was found online; those who attended were independent David Bishop, who campaigns for better rural bus services, Robert Courts for the Conservatives, Duncan Enright for Labour, Liz Leffman for the Liberal Democrats, Larry Sanders for the Green Party (left), independent Daniel Skidmore, and Nicholas Ward, an independent candidate against the HS2 rail link.

16 questions were submitted by members of the 200-strong audience on Brexit but once candidates had explained their positions people asked for new topics to be discussed and the effects of climate change were next on the agenda.

Key topics were:

cuts to local NHS services,

housing shortages

the shrinking reach of rural bus services (one village with 800 homes has no regular public transport)

grammar schools

the refugee crisis

housing levels in West Oxfordshire

traffic levels on the A40

Brexit,

climate change

affordable housing

Wind of change?

Martin Chapman, owner of a local grocery store-cum-restaurant, a long-standing Conservative voter and admirer of David Cameron, may have been speaking for many when he said: “I won’t be supporting the Conservative candidate. We are heading for a hard Brexit and we’ve had announcements like grammar schools with which I am really disappointed. It all seems to be going wrong. I’m backing the Lib Dems because we want politicians to work together for the best solution for the country. The decisions made in the coming months will have such a profound impact for a long time to come.”

Both Labour and Lib-Dem candidates are reported to have made a good impression – the outcome of this by-election may not be a foregone conclusion.

Our civil service needs thorough scrutiny; unelected civil servants are trusted to inform elected politicians informed and give impartial guidance. When things go wrong the politicians are left to ‘carry the can’, while the civil servants who gave the advice remain with jobs intact and safe from harm.

All aspects of civil service employment including recruitment, training, performance and progression are potentially deeply flawed and corrupt.

From my own experience this includes insidious and profligate managerial manipulation of targets and statistics, contentious priorities relating to treatment of staff, distribution of staffing resource, purpose and priorities of duties and workloads, and procurement.

Specific failings:

IT systems are not fit for purpose, with lack of subsequent adequate support for staff who must use it.

Poor staff training over perception of vulnerable customers and Work Programme participants.

Misplaced loyalties, obligation and integrity among some managers and staff resulting in compliant acceptance of unethical behaviour.

Prospects of individual reward, fear, internal politics and power of association lead to covering up wrongdoing and protecting those who avoid proper accountability.

Until this situation is reversed nothing will change for the better to improve our society.

*

Perhaps beneficial change is on the way. The Economist reports that Oxford’s Saïd Business School and the Major Projects Authority (MPA), an agency set up by Britain’s governing coalition to work with the Treasury and other government departments to provide independent assurance on major projects, invited senior business figures to lead discussions and officials share ‘gripes’ with visiting permanent secretaries (the ministries’ top brass). These senior civil servants are some of the most discreetly influential people in Britain; they oversee costly projects ranging from HS2, a planned high-speed railway, to procuring aircraft carriers and a sensitive nuclear-energy deal with Beijing.

There is growing awareness that – as our correspondent said – when such projects go awry they cost a fortune and damage politicians’ standing; governments should indeed be attempting to reshape their civil services into more efficient, less blunder-prone and more public-spirited organisations.

At least, one writes, there will not be the heartache of watching such a team fail – as did the widely hailed Blair and Obama – beset by vested interest and failing to fulfil expectations.Instead on past record there will be:

more austerity for the ‘have-nots’, continuing as senior bankers flourish – despite causing the economic crash;

declining public services;

sub-standard education and training for the young from poorer families;

‘aspirational’ housing built on green spaces as council housing lists grow;

the revolving door between big business and government continuing to spin, ensuring that decisions are made in favour of the rich;

Joining our grim litany of bad decisions by government (on fracking, social housing, destroying Libyan fresh water pipeline, etc) is a 130-page report on the HS2 project, just released by the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee.

This adds to concerns over HS2’s value for money expressed by the National Audit Office, echoing a similar report published by the Commons Public Accounts Committee in January. None of the media reports seen – as is often the case – provide a link to the report, which we now offer: Report: The Economic Case for HS2 (HTML)

Its verdict:

Lord Hollick, chairman of the Lords’ committee, said overcrowding on the West Coast Main Line was largely a problem confined to Friday evenings, weekends on long-distance trains and London-bound commuter trains.

Evidence showed long-distance trains to and from Euston were, on average, only 43% full and even during peak times were only 50-60% full.

He added that the Government has not carried out a proper assessment of whether alternative ways of increasing capacity are more cost-effective than HS2 and concluded that in terms of rebalancing the economy, London is likely to be the main beneficiary from HS2.

The FT noted that although the government claims the biggest beneficiaries will be business travellers, peers said the evidence used to calculate the magnitude of this benefit, an estimated £40.5bn, was “out of date and unconvincing”, with some of it dating from 1994.

On capacity – it continued – the peers criticised the transport department for a lack of transparency and said full information on railway use had not been made publicly available by the government on grounds of commercial sensitivity.

No consideration of the social and environmental costs of the project was included in the report’s list of contents.

Following news of Katja Hall (left), the CBI’s deputy director-general, lobbying for more executive house building so that members’ employees can easily be relocated round the country, a reader has sent a link to a report about David Cameron’s new promise to the CBI’s annual conference.

The government is planning to spend £15bn to deal with more than 100 of the notorious problem hotspots on England’s roads by the end of the decade. David Cameron will announce on Monday that hundreds of extra lane miles will be created on motorways and trunk roads to speed up journey times.

Plans to build a tunnel under Stonehenge, widely advocated by John Cridland, Director-General of the CBI (on its ‘wish list’), are said to have been ‘looked at’ by the government to help ease congestion on the A303, a key arterial route from the south-west to London which is among those set to benefit from the proposed funding. Other details may be read here.

Our reader asks: how many remember the Barber Boom?

Thanks to the internet we can explore the background to his question. Quentin Letts’ tirade clarifies: “Dr Beeching’s plan to cut 100,000 jobs and close 2,000 railway stations, along with 5,000 miles of rail track was one of the most anti-progressive steps of the past 50 years. To this day, there are traffic jams and bottlenecks which can be traced to Beeching. Pollution is higher than it need be, thanks to Beeching. Suburban sprawl is bigger, the highlands of Wales and Scotland more deprived, and hundreds of thousands of commuters unhappier than they should be – thanks to bloody Beeching”.

Dr John Newson reminds usthat the transport minister at the time was Ernest Marples, who had private interests in the road building industry.

His 1,000-mile national motorway-building programme, was complete by 1971 – by which time another 2,000 miles had been announced. Our reader continues:

“Anthony Barber, Chancellor of the Exchequer between 1970 and 1974, pumped millions into the economy to build roads which was followed by massive inflation.

”Road building is popular with governments as it doesn’t require too much importing of raw materials and does boost employment – albeit temporarily.

”Funny how this is going to run alongside HS2 – which will involve importing materials and skills”.

On 29th September it was reported that Balfour Beatty ‘s shares had closed 15.3% lower – following several months’ gradual decline. The company also said there would be a further shortfall of £75m this year in its UK construction services division, following two earlier profits warnings this year.

So hearing David Cameron’s promise – as our reader said –”Balfour Beattymust be rubbing their hands” and should ardently support his re-election.

She continues: “I also read that Cambridge University have done a study and come up with food production shortages in this country by 2030 with development going the way it is – not very novel as I could have told them for nothing.

“I went on a tour round the borough last week and one of the sites was over by the airport where the HS2 is coming through.

“We stood amongst wheat growing on a farm of 300 acres which will have only 50 acres left when this useless project has taken its amount of land for the trains to zoom up and down. (Read about the effect HS2 will have on farms – and therefore food production – here.)

“What type of people have we running this country who take their orders from an unelected power base in Brussels?”

Her website notes a Spectator view that she has been a key figure in the New Establishment, due to her friendship with Steve Hilton, David Cameron’s former director of strategy, and Ed Miliband. She believes that:

If pupils in the Muslim community, neglected black council-estate children, white working class in sink comprehensives, and Roma in Sheffield or Glasgow aren’t to be held backby the barriers of discomfort, distaste and prejudice: “they must be taught theprinciples, beliefs and manners of the employingclasses”.

Competing for power over the underprivileged young: her strategy, British values . . .

But are the values,principles, beliefs and manners of most of the ‘employingclasses’ so admirable?

They permit collusion with the profitable spread of tawdry ‘aspirational’ housing but neglect of heritage buildings, the establishment of incinerators, fracking plants, GM technology, HS2 and nuclear power stations polluting the countryside, the sale of British-made weapons to oppressive regimes and terrorists – and the execution of civilians by drone strike.

State and local governments want showcase projects and councillors and ministers want “legacies” . . .

The message: the Coalition is delivering on infrastructure

A reader on holiday in Devon took time off to draw our attention to an article by Liam Halligan, who has a remarkably wide wealth of business experience.

Last week, George Osborne, David Cameron and government ministers were photographed inspecting building projects across the country, wearing hard hats and high-visibility jackets. The message: the Coalition is delivering on infrastructure.

The Treasury published an updated list of over 200 major projects to be completed or started in 2014-15 – infrastructure spending will be £36bn this year, according to Downing Street, up from £15bn in 2013. But since 2010 the national debt has risen from £800bn to over £1,200bn. Government is still borrowing £100bn-plus annually, as it has for five successive years.

Halligan’s view on the HS2 proposal: “What desperately needs addressing isn’t inter-city speed, but massive overcrowding on local commuter lines — not only into London, but Birmingham, Leeds, and Manchester too, where passenger numbers have grown faster than those into and out of the capital.

He advocates placing a greater emphasis on cross-country train services. Instead of spending £80bn-plus on the London-Birmingham leg of HS2, there should be investment in the two lines that already run between the two cities. Rather than a marginally quicker service from London to Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield – the cost of which will limit its use largely to business travellers –a world-class and more frequent inter-city links between the great northern cities is needed.

The last word from Halligan: “The UK’s public finances remain in a critical state. Now is the time for cost-effective solutions to genuine problems, not grand vanity projects”

“One of the justifications for the coalition’s cuts is the pretence that they are needed to pay for more infrastructure projects (Editorial, 27 June). Yet the emphasis on new roads and HS2 will be cost-escalating and take money away from the kind of local infrastructure spending that would result in economic activity nationwide. Increased economic activity could be fairly taxed and so get rid of the need for cuts, while helping rescue our flagging economy”.

He advocates:

“Tens of billions spent on low-carbon infrastructure and affordable housing would generate jobs, business and investment opportunities in every city, town, village and hamlet in the UK. Making every building in the UK energy-efficient and repairing, maintaining and improving the public transport system could prioritise the use of UK manufacturers.

“A crackdown on tax dodgers would make billions available to pump prime such an initiative. The result would be a reduction in public debt through a programme that improves society, the environment and the economy – the very opposite of the present cuts”.